Netflix’s engrossing new buddy road-trip documentary,Will & Harper, features comedy duo Will Ferrell and Harper Steele as they motor across America to celebrate Steele’s transition from male to female. The two icons of American comedy have shared a friendship and highly successful working relationship for close to 30 years,from their first encounter atSaturday Night Liveto their partnership as founder and Creative Director respectively of web production company Funny or Die.
Will & Harpermarks Ferrell and Steele’s fourth, and first non-fiction, film collaboration. Most famously, they co-wrote the gloriously off-beat movieEurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Sagain 2020, and it was less than two years later that the then-Andrew Steele notified Ferrell by email about the decision to fully transition to Harper. That revelation led them toWill & Harper, ostensibly a project thatwould throw the two friends together for a 3000-mile tripacross the US during which they’d examine their own, and middle America’s, response to Steele’s new gender reality.
Will Ferrell & Harper Steele Met In 1995 When They Started Working At Saturday Night Live
Harper Steele Supported Ferrell At SNL
Remarkably, Ferrell and Steele were hired bySaturday Night Liveas performer and writer within the same week in 1995. They immediately struck up a symbiotic relationship - Ferrell’s early work atSaturday Night Livedid not at first catch on, and as he toldCBS, “People were kind of saying, he isn’t that funny, and it was Harper who reported back to some of the writers like, ‘oh no, don’t sleep on him, he’s pretty funny.'” That initial support paid dividends as thetwo comics went on to create some of SNL’s most iconic characters, including Robert Goulet.
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Harper went on to becomeSNL’sHead Writer for four years, during which he collectedfive Emmy nominations, winning the 2002 award for Outstanding Writing. It was Ferrell who eventually lured Steele away fromSNLwhen, as a founder of Funny or Die, he hired Harper as Creative Director and thus began their journey into filmmaking.
Will Ferrell & Harper Steele Have Remained Best Friends For The Past 29 Years
Ferrell and Steele’s Professional Relationship Flourished Post-SNL
Will & Harperis as engaging as it is surprising- the two characters’ relationship is warm, funny, and heartfelt.Ferrell predictably carries the film’s funny boneand is even allowed gentle gags about breasts and driving, while Harper’s justifiable angst as she navigates various responses to her transition and to the gender biases they encounter as they venture across the country is both endearing and, at times, a little harrowing. Both comedians inWill & Harperemerge from the trip energized and newly educated, their relationship strengthened and deepened by the experience.
Will & Harper
Cast
Will Ferrell and his friend Harper, a newly out trans woman, take a road trip to reconnect and reintroduce her to the world.
